Bangalore breaks into top global startup league

BANGALORE: In a testimony to its robust startup culture, Bangalore has been ranked among 20 influential startup ecosystems around the world in a study by global research firm Startup Genome.

Silicon Valley tops the list, and is followed by Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, Seattle and New York. Bangalore is at the 19th spot. Singapore is the only other Asian country on the list, at No. 17.

Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing and Jakarta failed to make the list. Almost half the locations are in the US and Canada. Startup Genome is a project by three entrepreneurs - Bjoern Hermann, Max Marmer and Ertan Dogryutan - that seeks to capture the state of entrepreneurship worldwide.

It does it through the Startup Ecosystem Index, which benchmarks the rise and fall of startup ecosystems using eight weighted component indices based on talent, funding, output and support. The index is based on data from more than 50,000 startups around the world. Spanish firm Telefonica Digital funded the study this year.

Bangalore scored its best rankings (No. 10 in both) in the Mindset Index and the Differentiation from Silicon Valley (SV) Index. The former measures the extent to which entrepreneurs have demonstrated high appetite for risk, strong work ethic and ability to overcome challenges faced by startups. The latter measures how different the startup ecosystem is to Silicon Valley, taking into account the demographics and the type of companies started there, and Bangalore's rank suggests it's relatively similar to the Valley.